1. Field of Invention
Embodiments of the invention relate in general to viral communication. More specifically, the embodiments of the invention relate to methods and systems for re-establishing connections in the network by using viral communication techniques.
2. Description of the Background Art
Due to various catastrophic events, communication in various parts of the network is affected, and sometimes a network device is disconnected with the network. To revive the communication links of the disconnected network device, a visit to the network device is required. Each visit to the network device places an extra burden on the maintenance account of the network. Additionally, it is often realized that the network device simply needs to be rebooted for its revival. Further, in conventional methods of reviving disconnected network devices, network management is central and therefore non-optimal.
According to a conventional method, some access points (APs) obtain configuration updates through an aggregation router where a management application resides. The aggregation router manages and provides configuration information to the managed APs as well as access control to the users at the APs. The aggregation router and the APs are connected using Internet protocol (through layer 3). For redundancy purpose, two or more aggregation routers can be deployed. If one fails, APs can re-establish an IP relationship with another aggregation router.
According to another conventional method to re-establish connection between a disconnected network device with the network, the disconnected network device reverts to a last known working configuration in the case of lost connectivity. In this case, it is assumed that the loss of connectivity is due to mis-configuration of the disconnected network device (and the physical connectivity always exists). However, this method does not enable the disconnected network device to regain connectivity to the network when the actual connection (e.g., the physical link) is lost. In addition, this method also requires that a recovery configuration be persistently stored in a specified memory. The recovery configuration is typically a small bootup configuration to regain initial connectivity to a management application. Unless the amount of memory for recovery configuration is large enough to store the operational configuration and is backed up constantly, there can be loss in configuration after restoration of the connection.